The purpose of this paper is to assess the overall financial performance and
value implications of recent mergers and acquisitions in the Greek banking
system. The operating performance (OP) methodology is based on accounting
data and observes the pre- and post-merger financial performance of banks.
The event study approach utilizes stock returns of acquiring and target banks
around the announcement date of the merger to determine the presence of
abnormal returns. Consistent with the international literature, OP results do
not provide much evidence of performance gains resulting from bank mergers.
Nevertheless, merged banks seem to outperform the group of non-merging
banks. The event study approach indicates that mergers create value on a net
aggregate basis.
